


his voice is a familiar sound

by woahrebecca



Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - X-Ray & Vav, M/M, im putting au's in ANOTHER au, lowkey background raywood bUT SUPER LOWKEY
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-30
Updated: 2015-07-30
Packaged: 2018-04-12 02:21:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,934
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4461644
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/woahrebecca/pseuds/woahrebecca
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Michael and Gavin meet; not always the same way, not really. But spandex is always involved.</p><p>[a compilation of different versions of superhero!au's]</p>
            </blockquote>





	his voice is a familiar sound

**Author's Note:**

> Big thank you to to dee / michaelsgavin / donutsandcoffee for being my beta reader and basically helping me choose the title and summary and literally everything else. You're the true mvp.

Your name is Gavin Free, though at this point most people do not know you by this name or face, they only know you as Vav; the British guy with slow motion hands, the second part of the superhero duo and the man who once blew up the city with a cup of tea. You spend your time laying sprawled along the floor of the apartment you share with Ray as he plays video games which makes the screen light up in your peripheral, making plans that you will likely never use because if you’re going to be honest, you and Ray aren’t the best superheros that have ever existed. You don’t do much else with your spare time, you visit Hilda most of the time, then you walk around in plain clothes; appreciating that no one recognises you this way.

His name is Michael Jones – not that you asked Rusty to find out things about him after taking sneaky photos of him in the grocery store while Ray was bickering over pizza with someone who had an uncanny resemblance to the Mad King, not that you had to ask Rusty to research him for you because you are too shy, too awkward to ever speak to him yourself, you could never do that. You’re a superhero and you save lives but you just can’t get the courage to talk to him – and you see him everywhere around the city after that.

When you spot his curls out of the corner of your eye, your heart - _onetwothreeonetwothree_ \- skips a beat for a second and you feel as though his polite smile – because that’s all it could’ve been, you were staring at him after all and he was just be being polite – could be your kryptonite as a result of how much it makes you blush. You realise that to see him smile a real genuine smile at you would kill you where you stand so you cough awkwardly, run your hand through your hair and look away every time without fail.

 

* * *

 

It doesn’t take long for Ray to notice this, and he sniggers and elbows you every time this happens and you glare at him.

 

* * *

 

It’s on a rainy Monday afternoon – the worst possible type of day – and you run into Monarch Labs just as the rain starts coming down in sheets. You can hear the raindrops colliding with the structure of the building you’re in and it sounds like thousands of tiny fireworks and the noise is so deafening and it’s all you can hear, a cacophony of noise drowning out everything else around you, even your own thoughts

“Gavin, right?” a voice breaks through the muffled noise in your head and you whip your head around – too fast, you think, as you get a pain in your neck – and look at the man behind you and stare.

It’s Michael Jones - because _of-bloody-course-it-is_ – standing there in a crisp white lab coat, glasses on the end of his nose as he looks at you curiously “Uh, yes. That’s me.” You somehow manage to stutter out, and you’re thankful for him keeping his patience with you as you stumble over the words “Nice to meet you Michael.”

“How do you know my name?” he asks as he raises an eyebrow at you quizzically

Your eyes dart from his face to his chest, hoping that he has a name tag or an ID card on him so you can say that’s how you know his name, but of course he doesn’t so you make up some excuse – you hadn’t planned for any of this, why can’t things just go to plan – “Oh, I’ve heard Hilda talk about someone who looked similar to you before, so I just assumed-“you explain.

His back straightens and his eyes light up when you say that Hilda was talking about him, and you feel so bad for lying, but so happy for being the reason he looks so much happier than you have ever seen him before.

“I don’t think the rain’s going to stop anytime soon, follow me; I’m not doing much so you can stay with me, it’s much less boring in my lab I promise” he says as he smiles and walks away and you seem to be in a trance the way you follow him without questioning it.

He wasn’t wrong, as it is much more entertaining in his lab than it was in the waiting room. He darts around the room, working on intricate electronics that you don’t think you could ever understand but he looks at them in such a way that you feel _jealous_ of electronics because, although this is the first day you have ever spoken to him, you want him to look at you with such a look of adoration as well.

Of course you stumble over every word, and he probably thinks you’re stupid but he looks at you with such understanding and patience that it eases your nerves and your words come out easier – though your breath still catches in your throat when he turns at the right angle in the light and it lights up his features – until you’re able to have a normal conversation with him.

 

* * *

 

It’s hours later when the rain has stopped – after just ten minutes you couldn’t hear the noise on the building anymore, you were too focused on everything Michael was saying – and Michael just smiles at you – a real genuine one, and your heart stops beating for just a second – and he confirms what you heard “Oh, the rain has stopped now” but he doesn’t ask you to leave.

At 5pm, Michael puts down what he’s working on and takes off his coat – you politely avert your eyes despite his laughter saying that “you don’t need to do that Gavin, it’s just a lab coat” – and walks you back outside the building and you wait with him – you hold his coat as he makes a quick phone call - until his ride shows up.

You two are talking, just like you have been all day and it comes so naturally to you now and you’re sad when his ride shows up, and he waves at you through the window as the car drives off.

It’s only when you’re halfway home that you realise you still have his lab coat and you protect it as you quicken your pace to reach your apartment a few blocks down. When you get there, you unfold the coat and go to wash it – you can’t give it back to him dirty! – when a piece of paper falls out of the pocket.

It is a phone number, written in a scrawl on a piece of blueprint paper, and for the second time that day your heart momentarily stops as you run – clutching that scrap of paper as though you are drowning in a flood and that is all that will keep you afloat – to your room. You grab your phone off your bed and frantically type the number in, your hands shaking as though you are an addict getting their long awaited fix.

You each other text long into the night, and he tells you that you can keep his lab coat – as he has “ _fucking hundreds! I don’t know where they come from but it’s ridiculous_ ” – and you’re thankful that you got distracted before you could wash it, because now it’s going to smell like him, which you realise is a very odd thing to think.

He asks you out one night – he’s drunk, spluttering, “It’s Hilda’s fault! She said I needed liquid courage and god Gavin I needed it,” when he shows up at your apartment block – and you say yes, and the next week you have a date at the movies watching some shitty action film that’s name you can’t ever remember because you barely paid attention to it at all.

On the third date, he kisses you and you freeze up, limbs tightening and god all you want to do is run your fingers through his hair and kiss him back but your body betrays you. But he smiles, because he understands.

On the sixth date, you finally find the courage you’d been looking for months ago when you first saw him, and you kiss him this time. It’s frantic, out the front of some stingy bar as you walked home together, both slightly tipsy and holding hands. The only reason you had stopped was because Michael was pointing out the flaws in the electricity and wiring and he had that look on his face of total adoration like the first time you were in his lab, except this time he looks that way at you. You don’t even realise you’re kissing him until your mouth is on his, with one of your hands on the small of his back and the other in his hair. You push him against the dirty brick wall and neither of you care about the dress shirts you’re wearing, and how moss stains will never come out.

_Would it be too cliché to say it was electrifying?_

On the tenth date – with a nasty bruise on your face and a limp – you tell him that you’re Vav and he just smiles and laughs “I knew that Gavin, I’ve known it for a while now” he says as he helps you slowly hobble over to the table you had booked two weeks earlier. Although he says that he doesn’t mind you being a hero, you can tell he worries about you more than he may care to admit.

On the thirteenth date – after weeks of mentally preparing yourself for this, because this all new and you have no plan for this – you two spend the night together and it was not what you expected, but god you enjoyed it and as you lay your head on his chest as it heaves _upanddownandupanddown_ as you both catch your breath, you tell him that you love him and he runs his hand through your hair and tells you that he loves you too.

On the umpteenth date – you have both lost count at this point, it has been years after all – you can tell something is different through the way he shakes at dinner and his eyes flit about nervously and your heart sinks because you know what’s coming; it always happens like this. People leave. Yet again, Michael Jones surprises you when he proposes and for once in your life you don’t freeze up. You say yes instantly.

You two get married a year and a half after that, it was meant to be earlier but the Mad King came back so you were very preoccupied and it is extremely difficult to plan a wedding when you’re also trying – and rarely ever succeeding – to take down a murderous super villain. The wedding was nothing short of perfect.

You don’t live with Ray anymore, but X-Ray and Vav are still going strong. It is quieter now, as it has been years since you two started this, and all the supervillains have been captured – or killed, but that’s by accident – and now Ray lives with the man he was arguing about pizza with – Ryan, that’s what his name is – all those years ago.

Your name is Gavin Free – or Gavin Jones, depending on who you ask – and you are two things; you are Vav, part of the superhero duo who protects the city and is responsible for its current time of peace and you are also Michael Jones’ and he is yours.


End file.
